Walter Wick: Storybook & Out of this World

The whimsical world of Walter Wick has fascinated people of all ages since 1991, when his first children’s book series I SPY found its way onto the bookshelves of millions of American households. The success of Wick’s books has established him as one of the most celebrated photographic illustrators of all time. A Hartford native, Wick began his artistic career as a landscape photographer before becoming enamored with the technical aspects of studio photography. Wick aspired to master studio techniques, but also to represent such concepts as the perception of space and time in photographs, and experimented with mirrors, time exposures, photo composites, and other tricks to do so. This manipulation of processes and perception has led to a prolific career that has now, 25 years after the release of I SPY: A Book of Picture Riddles, resulted in the publication of 26 children’s book.

In 2006, the New Britain Museum of American Art was proud to present the first iteration of Wick’s retrospective exhibition Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos, and Toys in the Attic, which has since traveled to 15 additional museums across the United States. The continued success of this exhibition, now over ten years after its premiere installation at the NBMAA, is a testament to the appeal of Wick’s photographs and installations. In 2015, through the generosity of Walter Wick and Linda Cheverton Wick, the NBMAA was gifted a collection of 84 of Wick’s masterful photographs. The current installation is a celebration of this marvelous contribution to the Museum’s permanent collection, and to Wick’s influence on the development of photographic illustration.